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Dear typologists,</div>
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My colleagues and I are planning a monograph titled “Lectometry: Measuring cross-linguistic distances”. In this prospective monograph, we define “lect” as any linguistic variety (including dialects and languages) and lectometry the measurement of the distance
between lects at any level.</div>
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I went through the previous literature using the term “lectometry” and discovered that the authors who have been using it did so in a slightly different sense, i.e. the distance between “lects” such as dialects, regiolects, sociolects, and other “micro-”levels,
not including what are commonly referred to as “languages”.</div>
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While we would like to use the term “lectometry” for a broader sense to cover languages or even macrolanguages, it would not be desirable to “hijack” a term that is already being used in a different sense. So I would like to ask you for a general opinion on
using the word in this sense. Please find attached the abstract of the introduction of the monograph that explains the rationale for using this term.</div>
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If you think expanding the semantic scope of an existing word is not adequate, I would also appreciate any suggestions on what alternative terms (existing or not) may be preferred.</div>
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From Otaru,</div>
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Ian</div>
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</span><span style="font-family: "MS Gothic";">朱 易安</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><br>
JOO, IAN <br>
</span><span style="font-family: "MS Gothic";">准教授</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><br>
Associate Professor <br>
</span><span style="font-family: "MS Gothic";">小樽商科大学</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><br>
Otaru University of Commerce</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Apple Color Emoji"; color: black;">🌐</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: black;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(113, 79, 188);"><a href="http://ianjoo.github.io/" data-outlook-id="ebfee0c1-4309-48a6-a57b-824f0427e0ce" style="color: rgb(113, 79, 188);">ianjoo.github.io</a></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: black;"><br>
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